Danbury Mayor and Republican gubernatorial contender Mark Boughton is calling on Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to scrap a new $569,637 television advertising campaign that extols the virtues of doing business in Connecticut.

He said the 30-second commercials, which were unveiled Monday and feature executives who have received of economic aid from the Malloy administration, are thinly veiled campaign ads for Malloy, run at taxpayer expense.

"These are purely political," Boughton said. "We told him he shouldn't run them. Right now, it's a very silly effort to try to have people in Connecticut have a different opinion about what they already know -- that the economy is in ruins and Dan Malloy bears a lot of responsibility for that."

Malloy's office said the advertising campaign is consistent with others in recent years and is heavily targeted at TV viewers in the greater New York City television market.

The ads, which feature executives from NBC Sports and Cigna, open with a voiceover that says "Meet the real job creators" and close with the line, "Join the growing businesses building their future in Connecticut." Both ads display a graphic declaring 50,000 new jobs added under Connecticut's current economic development plan, but make no mention of Malloy.

The Connecticut ads aren't even as effective as "The New New York" advertising campaign, part of a $140 million promotional blitz by the Empire State, Boughton said.

"If it walks like a duck, if it quacks like a duck, it's a duck," Boughton said.

Of the total ad buy, $526,416 is being spent in the greater New York City television market for the next five weeks, according to the governor's office, which said the ads will run on cable news and sports channels.

"It's exactly where you would expect to court businesses," Doba said.

This is not the first time that Republicans have criticized the advertising campaign.

Tom Foley, the favorite to repeat as the GOP's nominee for governor, said that the ads could come away with the false impression that the state's economy is vibrant. The ads overstate the number of jobs created during Malloy's administration, he said.

"I noted several months ago that last year the Malloy administration spent millions of taxpayer money intended to promote tourism instead on a puff piece about how good things are in Connecticut," Foley said Tuesday in a statement to Hearst Connecticut Media. "It might have made sense running the ads out of state to attract businesses here, but running them in-state makes no sense and is a thinly veiled campaign expense for Governor Malloy. It's also insulting to all of those out of work in Connecticut for Governor Malloy to say he has created 50,000 jobs when his own Department of Labor says Connecticut residents have fewer jobs today than when he took office."